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GEO Label White paper

This draft document is intended to be a white paper generated by the SIF team to collaborate to the GEO label development from its interoperability point of view.

Draft of the SIF letter of support to the GEO label

What is the GEO label

The GEO label is a dynamic graphical representation (with drill down functionality) of the metadata accompanying the data provided by GEOSS in the GCI.

The Global Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS) is a distributed system of systems that currently facilitates access to more than 28 million dataset records, and is constantly growing, choices faced when selecting a dataset can (depending on usage domain) be quite daunting. With such a great choice of datasets comes the problem of data quality assessment and dataset selection. To tackle this challenge, the former GEO Science and Technology Committee (STC) proposed to establish a GEO label "a label to recognize the scientific relevance, quality, acceptance and societal needs for activities in support of GEOSS". The STC suggested that the development of such a GEO label could significantly improve user recognition of the quality of geospatial datasets and that its use could help promote trust in datasets that carry it. In 2010-11 the European Commission financed two Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) projects (GeoViQua and EGIDA) to support the STC activities, with both projects adopting the responsibilities for defining the GEO label concept. In 2012 ID-03 GEO Task (http://www.geo-tasks.org/id03) took over the ST-09-02 and is now responsible for the development of the GEO label concept. The EGIDA project ended in 2012 but the GeoViQua is still working on defining the GEO label and providing its practical implementation until the beginning of 2014. GeoViQua believes that the GEO label could also assist in dataset searching and selection activities by providing users with visual cues of dataset quality and possibly relevance; in essence, a GEO label could effectively operate as a decision-support mechanism for dataset selection. We aim for the support of the broader GEO community and eventual endorsement by the GEO Implementation Boards, ExCom and GEO Plenary.

GEO label presentation and functionality

How the GEO label looks like

It is composed by 8 informational facets that represents the following concepts

Facet icon Description
‘Producer profile’ facet conveys availability of information about the producer of the dataset, e.g., organisation or individual who produced the dataset, their contact information, etc. (ISO191151, FGDC2, GeoViQua PQM3)
‘Lineage information’ facet conveys availability of lineage/provenance information, e.g., processing applied to data and number of process steps. (ISO19115, FGDC, GeoViQua PQM)
‘Producer comments’ facet conveys availability of any informal comments about the dataset quality as provided by the dataset producer, e.g., any identified problems, suggested use, etc. (ISO191151, FGDC2, GeoViQua PQM3)
‘Compliance with standards’ facet conveys availability of information about dataset’s compliance with international standards, e.g., compliance with ISO 19115, Dublin Core, etc. (ISO191151, FGDC2, GeoViQua PQM3)
‘Quality information’ facet conveys availability of formal quality measures of the dataset, e.g., uncertainty measures recorded in UncertML, errors, accuracy information, etc. (GeoViQua PQM3)
‘User feedback’ facet conveys availability of feedback, comments and ratings provided by the users of the dataset, e.g., general comments on dataset quality, identified problems, suggested use for the dataset, etc. (GeoViQua UQM4)
‘Expert reviews’ facet conveys availability of domain experts’ comments on dataset quality, e.g., results of formal quality checks, expert suggestions on the dataset applications, etc. (GeoViQua UQM4)
‘Citations information’ facet conveys availability of citations where the dataset was used and cited, e.g., formal reports on dataset quality checks, journal articles, etc. (GeoViQua PQM3, GeoViQua UQM4)

As the GEO label is intended to convey the availability of quality information for a given dataset, each informational facet can represent one of three availability states:
  • available,
  • not available, and
  • available only at a higher level (indicates that information is not immediately available for the dataset, but is available for a parent dataset).
These three information availability states will be expressed through varying the appearance of the facet icons.

Facet icon Description
Fully filled-in background + white icon – indicates that information is available for this dataset.
White background + icon outline – indicates that information is not available for this dataset.
Partially filled-in background + icon outline – indicates that information is available only at a higher level for this dataset.

Based our user studies, we developed this GEO label representation.

When integrated in the GEOSS, an individual GEO label can be provided for each dataset catalogued in the Discovery and Access Broker in the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (or other data portals and catalogues) based on its available quality information. Producer and feedback metadata documents are being used to dynamically assess information availability and generate the GEO labels. The producer metadata document can either be a standard ISO/FGDC compliant metadata record supplied with the dataset, or an extended version of a GeoViQua-derived metadata record, and is used to assess the availability of a producer profile, lineage, producer comments, compliance with standards, citations and quantitative quality information. GeoViQua user feedback server collects and encodes (as metadata records) user and producer feedback on datasets; these metadata records are used to assess the availability of user comments and ratings, expert reviews and user-supplied citations for a dataset.

GEO labels can be provided in raster formats (e.g. png) and vector formats (e.g svg)

Hover functionality

The SVG version of the GEO label is more dynamic offering extra textual information when someone hovers the label with the mouse cursor

Facet icon Hovering extra information example
Producer Profile Organisation name: Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems, George Mason University.
Lineage Information Number of process steps: 3.
Producer Comments: Supplemental Information: undefined Known Problems: undefined
Standards Compliance: Standard name: ISO 19115:2003/19139, version 1.0.
Quality Information: Quality information scope: undefined.
User Feedback Number of feedbacks: 0. Average rating: 0 (0 rating(s)).
Expert Review Number of reviews: 0. Average rating: 0 (0 ratings).
Citations Information Number of citations: 0.

Example of the hover functionality in the first facet of the GEO label
Producer Hover GEO Label

Drill-down functionality

The GEO label provides drill-down functionality which will allow a user to navigate to a GEO label page offering detailed quality information for its associated dataset.

Example of the drill-down functionality in the quality information facet of the GEO label
QualityDrillDown.png

GEO label generation technicalities

To build a GEO label we need a ISO or FGDC metadata document and a GeoViQua User Feedback metadata document. The facets of the GEO label will then be illuminated depending on queries to those documents. These queries can take the form of xpath expressions that are encapsulated in a GEO label API to generate and access its functionality.

XPaths

Currently the XPaths are now stored in 2 JSON configuration files and can be accessed/viewed on GitHub:

This XPath use a namespace agnostic XPath queries.

GEO label API v1 (www.geolabel.net service)

Documentation can be found also here:
http://www.geolabel.net/api.html

Endpoint: www.geolabel.net/api/v1/geolabel?

Operations to retrieve GEO label SVG representations.
GET
Name Required Data Type Description
metadata* optional URL URL to producer metadata document. Metadata document must be ISO19115, ISO19157, FGDC or GVQ-PQM compliant.
feedback* optional URL URL to feedback document. Feedback document must be GVQ-UQM compliant.
size optional int Desired size of returned SVG. If not specified, the default size is 125x125 pixels.

*at least one of these is required
POST
Name Required Data Type Description
metadata* optional URL URL to producer metadata document. Metadata document must be ISO19115, ISO19157, FGDC or GVQ-PQM compliant.
feedback* optional URL URL to feedback document. Feedback document must be GVQ-UQM compliant.
size optional int Desired size of returned SVG. If not specified, the default size is 125x125 pixels.

*at least one of these is required

Endpoint: www.geolabel.net/api/v1/facets?

Operations to retrieve GEO label JSON representations.
GET
Name Required Data Type Description
metadata* optional URL URL to producer metadata document. Metadata document must be ISO19115, ISO19157, FGDC or GVQ-PQM compliant.
feedback* optional URL URL to feedback document. Feedback document must be GVQ-UQM compliant.

*at least one of these is required
POST
Name Required Data Type Description
metadata* optional URL URL to producer metadata document. Metadata document must be ISO19115, ISO19157, FGDC or GVQ-PQM compliant.
feedback* optional URL URL to feedback document. Feedback document must be GVQ-UQM compliant.

*at least one of these is required

Endpoint: www.geolabel.net/api/v1/drilldown?

The service will apply the styling to the XML documents and present them in a more readable for the users format.
GET

Name Required Data Type Description
metadata* optional URL URL to producer metadata document. Metadata document must be ISO19115, ISO19157, FGDC or GVQ-PQM compliant.
feedback* optional URL URL to feedback document. Feedback document must be GVQ-UQM compliant.
facet required string GEO label facet identifier. Allowed values:
  • producer_profile
  • producer_comments
  • lineage
  • standards_complaince
  • quality
  • user_feedback
  • expert_review
  • citations

*at least one of these is required

Examples of obtaining GEO labels (GET requests)

URLs need to be encoded when passed to the GEO label service.

  • Producer and feedback documents XMLs
    • BASE_URL? metadata =http://www.ogc.uab.cat/cgi-bin/GeoViQUA/WMSQ/MiraMon.cgi?SERVICE=CSW&REQUEST=GetRecordById&OUTPUTSCHEMA=http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gmd&ELEMENTSETNAME=full&id=LandCover_ClsMix_Cat1:EPSG:23031&LANGUAGE=eng&OUTPUTFORMAT=application/xml& feedback =https://geoviqua.stcorp.nl/api/v1/feedback/items/search?target_code=LCL12_GrnBcn_2005_07&format=xml&view=full
  • Only producer document XML
    • BASE_URL? metadata =http://www.ogc.uab.cat/cgi-bin/GeoViQUA/WMSQ/MiraMon.cgi?SERVICE=CSW&REQUEST=GetRecordById&OUTPUTSCHEMA=http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gmd&ELEMENTSETNAME=full&id=LandCover_ClsMix_Cat1:EPSG:23031&LANGUAGE=eng&OUTPUTFORMAT=application/xml
  • Only feedback document XML
    • BASE_URL? feedback =https://geoviqua.stcorp.nl/api/v1/feedback/items/search?target_code=mtri2an1ib&target_codespace=opengis.uab.cat&view=full&format=xml

  • Human-readable URL:
    BASE_URL? metadata =http://schemas.geoviqua.org/GVQ/4.0/example_documents/PQMs/DigitalClimaticAtlas.xml& feedback =https://geoviqua.stcorp.nl/api/v1/feedback/items/search?target_code=LCL12_GrnBcn_2005_07&format=xml&view=full

    • Value of field metadata encoded:
      http%3A%2F%2Fschemas.geoviqua.org%2FGVQ%2F4.0%2Fexample_documents%2FPQMs%2FDigitalClimaticAtlas.xml
    • Value of field feedback encoded: https%3A%2F%2Fgeoviqua.stcorp.nl%2Fapi%2Fv1%2Ffeedback%2Fitems%2Fsearch%3Ftarget_code%3DLCL12_GrnBcn_2005_07%26format%3Dxml%26view%3Dfull
    • Both fields combinded (URL sent to the API):
      BASE_URL? metadata =http%3A%2F%2Fschemas.geoviqua.org%2FGVQ%2F4.0%2Fexample_documents%2FPQMs%2FDigitalClimaticAtlas.xml& feedback =https%3A%2F%2Fgeoviqua.stcorp.nl%2Fapi%2Fv1%2Ffeedback%2Fitems%2Fsearch%3Ftarget_code%3DLCL12_GrnBcn_2005_07%26format%3Dxml%26view%3Dfull

      • Encoded only the ones needed for XML (& " ' < >) > to be used in PQM:
        http://base.url? metadata =http%3A%2F%2Fschemas.geoviqua.org%2FGVQ%2F3.1.0%2Fexample_documents%2FDigitalClimaticAtlas_v10.xml & feedback =https%3A%2F%2Fgeoviqua.stcorp.nl%2Fapi%2Fv1%2Ffeedback%2Fitems%2Fsearch%3Ftarget_code%3DLCL12_GrnBcn_2005_07%26format%3Dxml%26view%3Dfull
      • URL for API encoded encoded twice (also works in XML, but is not clickable/used as href): BASE_URL%3Fmetadata%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fschemas.geoviqua.org%252FGVQ%252F3.1.0%252Fexample_documents% 252FDigitalClimaticAtlas_v10.xml%26feedback%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fgeoviqua.stcorp.nl%252Fapi%252Fv1%252Ffeedback% 252Fitems%252Fsearch%253Ftarget_code%253DLCL12_GrnBcn_2005_07%2526format%253Dxml%2526view%253Dfull

GEO label integration in the GEOSS common infrastructure (GCI)

The integration in the GEOSS Common Infrastructure can be achieved in the server side and in the client side.

Server side integration in the DAB

In the server side, URL's for generating GEO labels are being integrated into the metadata records distributed by the Discovery and Access Broker (DAB). The label is considered a representation of the dataset and is being embedded in an ISO 19115 gmd:MD_BrowseGraphic element.

[...]
 <gmd:graphicOverview>
         <gmd:MD_BrowseGraphic>
              <gmd:fileName>
                  <gmx:FileName src=ADD_URL_FROM_ABOVE_HERE">GeoViQua.GeoLabel</gmx:FileName>
              </gmd:fileName>
              <gmd:fileDescription>
                        <gco:CharacterString>A GEOLabel with drill-down capabilities for this dataset</gco:CharacterString>
                    </gmd:fileDescription>
              <gmd:fileType>
                   <gmx:MimeFileType type="image/svg+xml">Scalar Vector Graphics</gmx:MimeFileType>
              </gmd:fileType>
         </gmd:MD_BrowseGraphic>
   </gmd:graphicOverview>
[...]

Client side integration in the GEO portal

In the GEO portal, the result of a query for information is a list of results. Some of this results can be datasets. The GEO label will be presented in the GEO portal next to summary results representing datasets and will help users to visually compare datasets using a metadata completeness criteria and will facilitate access to different aspects of the metadata by the use of the drill down functionality.
GeoLabelGeoPortal.png

GEO label API current implementations

Currently there are 2 independent implementations of the GEO label:

Both implementations are open source and it can be found in GitHub:

The process to define the GEO label

The design of the GEO label presented here has been GeoViQua project to build a GEO label as a potential future part of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure of the Global Earth Observing System of System (GEOSS). This effort is a GeoViQua contribution to ID-03 GEO Task. The aim of the GeoViQua project is to look for a consensus on the notion of the GEO label by means of participating in GEO tasks, GEO Plenary exhibitions, signing and MoU with the EGIDA project, and also by conducting a series of carefully designed user studies.

GEO label studies

In designing the GEO label, GeoViQua incorporated the mandate of the STC mentioned before but also recognized the importance of a user-centred design approach in order to develop a GEO label that is likely to garner user acceptance once deployed. Consequently, GeoViQua is approaching the development and evaluation of the GEO label via one preparatory and three main user-centred design phases. To this end, we have thus far conducted 3 user studies to
  • (1) identify the informational aspects of geospatial datasets upon which users rely when assessing dataset quality and trustworthiness (the preparatory phase), *
  • (2) elicit initial user views on the concept of a GEO label and its potential role as a solution to the stated problem of dataset selection (Phase I), and,
  • (3) evaluate prototype label visualizations (Phase II).

To date, we have completed the Preparatory Phase, as well as Phases I and II. Work is currently ongoing to develop the physical GEO label prototypes which will then be evaluated using established usability testing methods.

More information links:

-- JoanMaso - 07 Dec 2013
Topic attachments
I Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment
GeoLabelGeoPortal.pngpng GeoLabelGeoPortal.png manage 216.3 K 07 Dec 2013 - 08:40 JoanMaso  
ProducerHoverGEOLabel.pngpng ProducerHoverGEOLabel.png manage 28.2 K 06 Dec 2013 - 13:09 JoanMaso  
QualityDrillDown.pngpng QualityDrillDown.png manage 84.2 K 07 Dec 2013 - 07:19 JoanMaso  
geolabel_hmockup.pngpng geolabel_hmockup.png manage 216.3 K 07 Dec 2013 - 08:38 JoanMaso  
Topic revision: r7 - 14 Feb 2014, JoanMaso
 

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